BIRDS VS PIGS: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? Make moral choices that will affect the way you play Angry Birds, as you delve into an epic conflict in which the cost of failure is nothing less than the destruction of either race!
Yeah, I'm kidding.
It's
Angry Birds, the same old avian-catapulting downloadable title that's already sapped a month or so of your life on 'other systems', but now it's available as a Mini for PSP and PS3.
For those of you who used the month or so of your life that could have been taken by
Angry Birds productively, the game involves you flinging various types of bird across 2D landscapes in the name of destroying dastardly green pigs. The landscapes, of course, vary. There might be any number of obstacles and barriers in your way. Similarly, the abilities (for lack of a better word) of the birds vary. Some accelerate mid-flight when you tap [X] (in the case of the PSN version), some split into multiple projectile bluebirds, some explode, some do other things that I won't list in their entirety.
Alas, the PS3/PSP version is not a good port.
I started on the PS3. The first thing to set your neurons off is the suspicious whiff of upscaled graphics surrounding the title screens. The second thing to set them off is the not-quite-so-pungent whiff of upscaled graphics floating around the levels themselves. Jaggies are very, very noticeable throughout.
The game is also riddled with the stop/start judderiness players of the iOS versions (and possibly others, but my experience of
Angry Birds is on the iPhone 4) will remember.
The control scheme is also a right old pain in the arse
In a nutshell, the left analogue stick controls the direction in which you'll catapult your bird, then [X] releases it. Except for when releasing the analogue stick also releases the bird. Sometimes releasing the analogue stick will just cancel your shot, sometimes it will initiate it. A bit of consistency would be pretty awesome.
The real problem, though, comes with the zoom function. Left to its own devices, the camera focuses on the catapult, then follows the bird across the screen. I can see the logic behind that in terms of activating abilities, as it offers more accuracy, but when you're focused on the catapult you rarely have a view of what you're firing at. To zoom out, though, you have to keep the shoulder buttons held for the entire time you want a wider view.
It's annoying
I'm aware that it sounds like a minor quibble, but when you have to spend the majority of the game holding those buttons down, it gets annoying.
But I perkily thought, 'Hey, it's a Mini, it's playable on the PSP, that'll probably be better!' Nope. The graphics issues are less noticeable, but the control scheme feels even worse. It's the same set-up as the PS3 controls, but keeping the PSP's shoulder buttons held while using the [X] button and the thumb nubbin actually
hurts after a while.
Conclusion
All that negative stuff said, though, a bad port of a good game still has a good game as its starting point. If you've already got Angry Birds on another platform, you really don't need to get the PSN version too. If you don't, and you don't have any other devices you can download it to, then behind the annoyances there's still a fun little game to play on the PS3, at least. (If you have to play it on the PSP you WILL end up with a claw where your dainty hand used to be).
SPOnG Score: 64% for PS3, 51% for PSP
